State Rep. Daniel Didech, D-Buffalo Grove, has filed HB 888 which would require those who apply for a state-issued Firearm Owners Identification Card– mandatory for legal gun owners– turn over a list of their social media accounts to authorities under threat of a Class 2 felony. The State Police would use the information to determine if the accounts have any “information that would disqualify the person from obtaining or require revocation” of a FOID card.

Democratic legislators in New York had proposed a similar proposed law last year.

The right to bear arms is guaranteed in the Constitution. These proposed laws are designed to circumvent this, by allowing the government to do fishing expeditions looking for any reason it can to deny a citizen this right.

Freedom of speech is also guaranteed in the Constitution. These proposed laws are designed to circumvent this also, by allowing the government to delve through your speech looking for any reason it can find to hurt you because of it.

Either way, what we have here is a 1984-like government intrusion into the privacy of citizens, with no restrictions. And it increasingly appears to be future Americans face, mostly due to their own choices at the ballot box.

Fascist Michigan: The state’s Department of Health and Human Services has decided that for a Marine to take custody of his own grandson he needs to sacrifice his second amendment rights.

The Johnsons were going to take custody of their grandson to keep him from going into foster care. When they went to pick up their grandson, William, a retired, disabled Marine with a Concealed Pistol License (CPL), was searched for a firearm. He was not carrying a firearm at the time. At that point, agency officials told the Johnsons that they would be required to provide all firearms’ serial numbers to the agency as part of a registry. When Johnson questioned agency workers, he was given a surprising response.

“If you want to care for your grandson you will have to give up some of your constitutional rights,” a MDHHS worker retorted.

When the Johnsons appeared before a Gogebic County Court judge, the judge reiterated the agency worker’s statement. “We know we are violating numerous constitutional rights here, but if you do not comply, we will remove the boy from your home,” the judge said. [emphasis mine]

For a state judge to issue an order that he knows violates the Constitution is outrageous. He should be removed from office immediately. Unfortunately, nether the article nor the actual court papers appear to give his name.

What could possible go wrong? A group of mathematicians have written software designed to prevent the gerrymandering of congressional districts, and are offering that software as a weapon for the courts to force states to revise the districts, even though those districts were created by fairly elected state legislatures.

Leaning back in his chair, Jonathan Mattingly swings his legs up onto his desk, presses a key on his laptop and changes the results of the 2012 elections in North Carolina. On the screen, flickering lines and dots outline a map of the state’s 13 congressional districts, each of which chooses one person to send to the US House of Representatives. By tweaking the borders of those election districts, but not changing a single vote, Mattingly’s maps show candidates from the Democratic Party winning six, seven or even eight seats in the race. In reality, they won only four — despite earning a majority of votes overall.

Mattingly’s election simulations can’t rewrite history, but he hopes they will help to support democracy in the future — in his state and the nation as a whole. The mathematician, at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, has designed an algorithm that pumps out random alternative versions of the state’s election maps — he’s created more than 24,000 so far — as part of an attempt to quantify the extent and impact of gerrymandering: when voting districts are drawn to favour or disfavour certain candidates or political parties.

There are numerous problems here, all of which center on my basic disbelief in the non-partisan objectivity of these scientists and their work.

First, note the first example used. Mattingly proudly shows how his software demonstrates that Democrats could have won more districts in North Carolina. In fact, if you read the article, he claims that the district revisions produced by his software (producing more victorious Democrats) creates fairer districts than the districts created by the state’s fairly elected Republican legislature. Moreover, it was the Republican redistricting that prompted this mathematician to write the software.

Funny how he never felt compelled to do this when it was Democrats controlling the legislatures and gerrymandering the congressional districts to their benefit.

Second, he has offered this software to the courts as evidence to overrule the redistricting done by fairly elected legislatures. In other words, this software will be used to justify letting unelected experts decide how congressional districts should be shaped, not elected officials picked by voters.

Third, note who has expressed interest in using this mathematician as a witness to win its lawsuits:» Read more

In short, California public officials at every level of state and local government have taken it upon themselves to replace core constitutional protections with their own radical vision of social justice. This isn’t federalism; it’s lawlessness. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and every state law, ordinance, regulation, or practice that conflicts its guarantees of individual liberty must be struck down.

Read it all. The fascist culture that is taking over California is not limited to its academic campuses. State and local elected officials there are increasingly using the power of the government to oppress anyone opposed to them, including harsh prosecutions.

Good news: The Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled that civil forfeiture denies citizens their due process rights under the Constitution. As the court wrote:

“Because of her indigency and inability to pay the required bond, [Kinnon] was excluded ‘from the only forum effectively empowered to settle [her] dispute.’ … Ultimately, Michigan’s civil asset forfeiture scheme operated to deprive [Kinnon] of a significant property interest without according her the opportunity for a hearing, contrary to the requirements of the Due Process Clause.”

This shouldn’t be rocket science, as the language and intent of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution is quite plain.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The problem today is that this has become rocket science. Too many people either don’t know this plain language, or work dishonestly to distort it to empower government to oppress us.

The Constitution is such an inconvenient thing: The Obama administration is claiming that, should Obama sign the Paris climate accords when he visits China next week, it will be sufficient to make it law, even though it will not have been approved by a two-thirds majority in the Senate as required by the Constitution.

White House senior adviser Brian Deese said the president has the legal authority to ratify the accord without the two-thirds Senate vote required for treaties. He said the pact negotiated by 195 countries in December is merely an “executive agreement. … The president will use his authority that has been used in dozens of executive agreements in the past to join and formally deposit our instrument of acceptance, and therefore put our country as a party to the Paris Agreement,” Mr. Deese said at a White House press conference. “That’s a process that is quite well-established in our existing legal system and in the context of international agreements and international arrangements,” Mr. Deese said. “There is a category of them that are treaties that require advice and consent from the Senate, but there’s a broad category of executive agreements where the executive can enter into those agreements without that advice and consent.”

Gee, I wonder what clause in the Constitution Mr. Deese can name that delineates the President’s power to sign and make binding “executive agreements” with foreign powers? My copy of the Constitution doesn’t seem to have any such clause. What it does say about foreign treaties is quite clear and blunt: The President “shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur.” (Article 2, Section 2).

But then, when has the law ever really meant anything to this President and the modern Democratic Party? In fact, it means so little to them that they have nominated a candidate for President who willfully ignores it, and then lies about that lawbreaking repeatedly.

The constitution is such an inconvenient thing: A new Obama executive order has redefined the work of gunsmiths to define them as manufacturers so that they can be much more heavily regulated, and likely put out of business.

The president’s executive order, which Obama signed on July 22 — around the beginning of the Democratic National Convention — conveys to the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC), which is primarily in charge of managing the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and establishing its rules, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).

DDTC now names commercial gunsmiths as “manufacturers” for relatively simple tasks as threading a barrel or duplicating a small custom part for an older firearm.

The law would require gunsmiths to spend thousands to meet the regulations, and would likely put most out of business, or force them underground into a black market.

The worst part of this, beyond the fact that it is a naked attack on law-abiding citizens because they do work Obama and liberals hate, is that if this executive order stands, it will grant the federal government unlimited power to destroy almost anyone in blue collar work that they don’t like Repair a car, install a carpet, fix a home’s air conditioning system, replace some plumbing, and you suddenly can be declared a manufacturer that no longer can afford to be in business.

The law is such an inconvenient thing: According to a new report, the Obama administration has been illegally funding Obamacare, and stonewalling Congress when it tries to exercise its constitutional required fiscal responsibility.

Among the report’s seemingly endless list of bad behavior by the Obama administration, it noted that multiple federal agencies withheld or redacted documents from Congress, “without any valid legal basis to do so.”

Hey, who cares about the law? That’s just some silly piece of paper that some old white guys wrote some 240 years ago. We are liberal, we are Democrats, and we know best. Now shut up and do as you are told!

Fascists: Senate Democrats are teaming up with a handful of Republicans to re-introduce a bill that would allow the federal government to instantly suspend the second amendment constitutional rights of anyone the FBI happens to declare a suspect.

If the FBI believes there’s a reasonable chance someone is going to use a gun in a terrorist attack, it should be able to make that determination and block the sale,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told a conference call on Monday.

No due process, no conviction, no actual evidence of wrong-doing is needed. Though the law tries to define what the FBI’s determinations should be based on, all the FBI and the federal government would really have to do is declare you a suspect. In other words, if they don’t like you — for example you happen to be a member of a tea party group that opposes Barack Obama, or you happen to be an Occupy Wall Street protester who opposes Donald Trump — they can cancel your second amendment rights and bar you from owning guns.

Hey, who says we need a first amendment or a Bill of Rights? We instead have elected Democrats to protect us, including the guy who introduced this bill and who has received $13,500 in campaign contributions from Planned Parenthood. Why should we worry?

Finding out what’s not in it: A federal court ruled today that the Obama administration had no legal right to issue subsidies to insurers that have not been appropriated by Congress.

The court was quite blunt about the White House’s illegal activities here:

Paying out Section 1402 reimbursements without an appropriation thus violates the Constitution. Congress authorized reduced cost sharing but did not appropriate monies for it, in the FY 2014 budget or since. Congress is the only source for such an appropriation, and no public money can be spent without one. See U.S. Constitution, Art. I, § 9, cl. 7 (“No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law . . . .”). The Secretaries’ textual and contextual arguments fail.

Not surprisingly, the Obama administration rejects the court’s decision.

The law is such an inconvenient thing: A federal appeals court has sustained a lower court injunction halting the Obama administration’s effort to make up law and issue amnesty to illegal immigrants.

Three significant take-aways from this:

1. The case will now proceed quickly to the Supreme Court.

2. The courts appear to be united against Obama’s illegal action, a fact that to me is a relief considering the number of Democratically-appointed judges in recent years who have allowed their partisan leanings to influence their decisions.

3. This will strengthen the hand of the lower court judge whose injunction was defied by the Obama administration, making it easier for him to impose serious contempt charges against Obama officials and Department of Justice lawyers.

Overall, this and other recent court rulings against the Obama administration give me hope that we are still a nation of laws, not men, and that we will weather this bad period and come out of it intact as a free nation.

A surge of book sales that pushed the US Constitution into the top ten best seller list of the Conservative Book Club has caused federal officials to put the Department of Homeland Security on “full alert.”

“This is just the type of abnormal behavior that should trigger a high state of vigilance,” Secretary Jeh Johnson declared. “We expect a few loud-mouthed right-wing politicians to repeatedly harp on whether some action taken by the government is constitutional. But we can’t afford to overlook tens of thousands of ordinary citizens reading such seditious literature.”

The site calls itself “Semi-News/Semi-Satire”. It is tragic how accurate that title is.

This article suggests that Obama’ attempt to impose immigration amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants is much less of a threat to the Constitution than implied by his own words and by the passionate response of many partisan conservatives.

[W]hile Barack Obama will no doubt argue about the fierce urgency of now, the plan has a rather large gap between his speech tonight and the actual action Obama promises to take. Section 2 is titled in bold font, You Cannot Apply For Several Months. The start of the program is nebulously given as “early 2015,” which could mean anything from January 2 to, say, June 29th. Why not start now if Obama is so tired of waiting? One has to wonder whether this is a bluff of sorts, intended to scare House Republicans into passing the Senate bill in the waning days of the lame-duck session. If Obama’s willing to wait “several months” to take action, why not just wait and at least attempt negotiation with incoming Republican leadership? [Emphasis in original]

The article, as well as this one, also note the problems faced by any illegals who try to apply under this Obama effort. They will expose themselves using a program of doubtful legality likely to be terminated by the next president or by the Republican Congress coming to power in January.

What Obama is attempting to do is certainly damaging to the rule of law, but I think it will turn out to be far more damaging to him and to the Democrats who try to defend him for doing it. As I noted earlier, Obama is now known by all to be a liar and a fraud. Supporting him in doing lawless acts as well can not be poilitically helpful for Democrats.

Theft by government: Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) are both proposing limits to the federal government’s ability to confiscate private property.

Since these confiscations are essentially unconstitutional and illegal, “limiting” the government’s ability here to me seems to be a weak response. These confiscations should cease entirely, now. Still, at least these Republicans are making sounds they want to do something about this fascist behavior.

Watch the video below the fold as a string of university officials from Southern Oregon University harass several students whose only action is standing on the sidewalk and handing out Constitutions.

It made me very proud to watch these college students defy authority to defend their very clear constitutional rights. The school wanted them to move to the very small restricted “Free Speech Zone”. The students refused, noting that the Constitution and Bill of Rights essentially designates the entire U.S. a free speech zone. The students also refused to give their names to one official, noting that they were uncomfortable doing that. Since the official had no authority to take their names, the official had to back down.

In the end, the school did nothing to them, and they remained on the sidewalk, handing Constitutions out of fellow Americans. Kudos to them all! We need more Americans willing to stand up like this and not be cowed.» Read more

In a party line vote, Senate Republicans today blocked a Democratic amendment to the Constitution that would have partly repealed the first amendment to the Bill of Rights.

This paragraph summarizes well the goals of the modern fascist Democratic Party:

Holding the vote, even in defeat, was a major political goal for Democrats during the two-week session of Congress. They hope the fight will help them rally their base ahead of November’s elections, arguing that changing the Constitution is needed to prevent wealthy conservatives from improperly influencing elections. [emphasis mine]

The Democrats aren’t mincing words about this. To put it another way, they believe that conservatives shouldn’t have the right to express themselves, and thus they want to repeal the free speech rights of every American so they can squelch the freedom of their conservative opponents.

George Will, in an op-ed condemning the Democratic Party’s effort to partially repeal the first amendment of the Bill of Rights in order to limit free speech, also provides us a convenient list of the Democrats who voted for this amendment, also highlighting those senators who are up for reelection in November.

As Will notes,

The 48 senators proposing to give legislators speech-regulating powers describe their amendment in anodyne language, as “relating to contributions and expenditures intended to affect elections.” But what affects elections is speech, and the vast majority of contributions and expenditures are made to disseminate speech. The Democrats’ amendment says: “Congress and the states may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections,” and may “prohibit” corporations — including nonprofit issue-advocacy corporations (such as the Sierra Club, NARAL Pro-Choice America and thousands of others across the political spectrum) from spending any money “to influence elections,” which is what most of them exist to do.

Because all limits will be set by incumbent legislators, the limits deemed “reasonable” will surely serve incumbents’ interests. The lower the limits, the more valuable will be the myriad (and unregulated) advantages of officeholders.

If you stand for freedom, you will stand to remove these fascists from office.

This is the new language:

To advance democratic self-government and political equality, and to protect the integrity of government and the electoral process, Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.

The phrasing is slightly different than the original, with the addition of the word “reasonable,” thus making believe that this makes their constitutional amendment more palatable. It does not. What it does do is illustrate once again that the modernDemocratic Party is not in favor of free speech. 42 Democratic Senators have endorsed this amendment. As John Hinderaker so cogently notes in the article above — paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson — the Democrats “have sworn eternal hostility against every limitation on government’s tyranny over the mind of man.”

In another victory against government overreach, the Supreme Court today ruled that a buffer zone protecting abortion clincs from protests violates the first amendment.

While the court was unanimous in the outcome, Roberts joined with the four liberal justices to strike down the buffer zone on narrow grounds. In a separate opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia criticized Roberts’ opinion for carrying forward “this court’s practice of giving abortion-rights advocates a pass when it comes to suppressing the free-speech rights of their opponents.”

I am once again gratified that the entire court recognized the unconstitutionality of this buffer zone. However, Scalia is right. That a majority of the court rejected the buffer on narrow grounds is unfortunate.

The law is such an inconvenient thing: In a 9-0 ruling, the Supreme Court has decided that Barack Obama’s fake recess appointments were unconstitutional.

Two and one-half years ago in 2012, Obama tried to slip-in appointments to the National Labor Relations Board without the constitutionally required Senate approval, claiming he had the right to do so because the Senate was in recess. There’s only one problem. The Senate was not in formal recess when Obama made the dictatorial appointments.

Now the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled in a unanimous 9-0 decision that Obama doesn’t get to define when the U.S. Senate is in recess, the Senate does.

I am gratified that all the Democratic appointees to the court ruled against Obama, refusing to allow their partisan tendencies to overrule the plain language of the Constitution. More information about the ruling and its history here.

More than 40 Senate Democrats have signed on to a constitutional amendment proposed by Senator Tom Udall’s (D., N.M.) that would fundamentally alter the right to free speech. Republicans are attacking the proposal, which would “give Congress clear authority in the Constitution to regulate the campaign finance system,” even though it has absolutely no chance of becoming a reality.

Key quote at the end:

It’s a reflection of today’s Democratic disrespect for free speech that an attempt would even be made. There was a time, not too long ago, when free speech was a bipartisan commitment.

It is important to note that this amendment is not being proposed by the fringe of the Democratic Party, but is endorsed by more than two-thirds of the party’s members in the Senate. It is in the mainstream of the liberal community, a community that increasingly relishes the idea of squelching free speech and blacklisting individuals because of their opinions.

Pigs fly! The University of South Carolina is closing its Women & Gender Studies department and replacing it with a program to teach the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers.

It appears university administrators have decided that they don’t have the option to ignore a state law that requires them to teach these fundamental American documents, as they tried to do earlier What is especially interesting is their decision on what to shutter to pay for the new courses. I suspect they had enough of porno on campus.

The law is such an inconvenient thing: University of South Carolina administrators refuse to teach the Constitution, as required by state stature, because they find it “inconvenient.”

State statutes maintain that all students at a South Carolina public school must spend a certain amount of time studying the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. Failure to abide by the statute is grounds for the removal of the head of the public institution–in this case, President Pastides. “Willful neglect or failure on the part of any public school superintendent, principal or teacher or the president, teacher or other officer of any high school, normal school, university or college to observe and carry out the requirements [of the statute] shall be sufficient cause for the dismissal or removal of such person from his position,” according to South Carolina law.

The USC administrators say the statute is inconvenient to enforce, however, since it would disrupt the university’s current course requirements.

It might inconvenient, and the law itself might be foolish, but it isn’t up the administrators to decide this. They should be fired.

The author details one by one the numerous lawless aspects of this law and the administration that created it, illustrating bluntly that, as damaging as Obamacare is to the health insurance industry, it has been far more harmful to the rule of law and the American system of justice and Constitutional government.

A physicians organization has filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration’s decision to delay Obamacare employer mandate by one year.

The AAPS lawsuit, which was filed today in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, asks the Court to enjoin the Obama Administration from imposing its “individual mandate” while delaying the “employer mandate.” The law that was passed by Congress in 2010 requires that the employer mandate go into effect at the same time as the individual mandate: Jan 1, 2014.

“The U.S. Constitution requires a strict separation of powers between the three branches of government, such that the executive branch cannot change laws passed by Congress,” AAPS’s lawsuit explains. By imposing the individual mandate in 2014 without the protection of the employer mandate, the Obama Administration has changed the legislation passed by Congress.

The New York Times first reported on Tuesday that the administration is giving some insurers and employers a one-year grace period to adhere to the limit, which otherwise would have capped individual costs at $6,350 a year. The full requirement will go into effect in 2015, rather than 2014. The change means some employers — namely, those with more than one benefit provider — could use plans with higher limits or no limit at all on out-of-pocket costs during that period. The grace period apparently was granted earlier this year, though was buried in reams of regulatory material and was not publicly reported until now. Department of Labor guidelines published in February had addressed the delay.

As Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) correctly notes, “The president doesn’t get to write legislation, and it’s illegal and unconstitutional for him to try and change legislation by himself.”

By allowing a president to do this kind of thing, we are losing our democracy.

“Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America’s quest for the moon… Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America’s greatest human triumphs.”
–San Antonio Express-News